Of trembling nostril; her coy unapproachable estrays, Stealthy treaders, climbers; her leapers furry, lissom-limb'd; Her timorous burrowers, and grangers thrifty, the sandy Playmates of the warren; her clumsy-footed, shaggy roamers; Her soarers, the feather'd fast-fliers, loftily floating 100 Sky-sailers, exiles of high solitudinous eyries; Her perching carolers, twitterers, & sweetly singing birds; All ocean's finny clans, mute-mouthers, watery breathers, Furtive arrow-darters, and fan-tail'd easy balancers, Silvery-scale, gilt-head, thorn-back, frill'd harlequinading Globe and slimy ribbon: Shell-builders of many-chamber'd Pearly dwellings, soft shapes mosslike or starry, adorning With rich floral fancy the gay rock-garden of ebb-tide: All life, from the massive-bulkt, ivory-tusht, elephantine Centēnarian, acknowledging with crouching obeisance 110 Man's will, ev'n to the least petty whiffling ephemeral insect, Which in a hot sunbeam engend'ring, when summer is high, Vaunteth an hour his speck of tinsely gaudiness and dies: Ah! what if all & each of Nature's favorite offspring, 'Mong many distinctions, have this portentous agreement, MOUTH, STOMACH, INTESTINE? Question that brute apparatus, So manifoldly devis'd, set alert with furious instinct: What doth it interpret but this, that LIFE LIVETH ON LIFE? That the select creatures, who[v]inherit earth's domination, Whose happy existence is Nature's intelligent smile, 120 Are bloody survivors of a mortal combat, a-tweenwhiles Chanting a brief pæan for victory on the battlefield? Since that of all their kinds most owe their prosperous estate Unto the art, whereby they more successfully destroy'd Their weaker brethren, more insatiably devour'd them; And all fine qualities, their forms pictorial, admired, Their symmetries, their grace, & beauty, the loveliness of them, Were by Murder evolv'd, to 'scape from it or to effect it. 'Surely again (yoū say) too much is proven, it argues 'Mere horror & despair; unless persuasion avail us 130 'That the moral virtues are man's idēa, awaken'd 'By the spirit's motions; & therefore not to be conceiv'd 'In Nature's outward & mainly material aspect, 'As that is understood. You, since you hold that opinion, 'Run your own ship aground invoking Nature against me.'-- Then withdraw the appeal, my friend, to her active alīance; Bē pessimist Nature with a pitchfork manfully expell'd, Not to return. Yet _soul in hand_, with brutal alegiance, Hunters & warriors _do not forget the comandment_. See how lively the old animal continueth in them: 140 Of what trifling account they hold life, yet what a practis'd Art pursue to preserve it: if I should rightly define sport